Emotional Intelligence: As determinant

of job Satisfaction and Psychological

Ownership among public and private
employees
Sumaira Naz (M.Sc) & Sidra Liaquat (M.Phil)
Department of Applied Psychology
Bahauddin Zakaryia University Multan

Introduction
Emotional Intelligence
Mayer and Salovey (1997) defined emotional
intelligence as "the capability to recognize and
convey emotion, incorporate feeling in thought,
comprehend and reason with emotion, and control
emotion in self and others."
Emotional intelligence is a mixture of
competencies and common dispositions for
adaptive individual performance and coping with
environmental strain(Matthews &Roberts, 2004).

Psychological Ownership

Psychological ownership reflects an affiliation

connecting an individual and an object, with a
secure connection with the self (Litwinski, 1942)
becoming part of the extended self (Belk, 1988;
Dittmar, 1992).
The sense of ownership, and the motivation to
guard and develop the object of the ownership, has
enthused organizational behavior scholars to
understand the positive construct of psychological
ownership. (ODriscoll, & Coghlan, 2004; Rousseau,
2003).

Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction bases on individuals' occurrences

which are associated with individuals requirements,

hope and settlement of their jobs (Locke, 1976).
Dormann and Zapf (2001) affirmed that job
satisfaction has significantly predisposed by a wide
variety of task characteristics including
responsibility, task variety and exchanges/reaction
mechanisms.

Literature Review

Goleman (1995, 1998) has recommended that

emotional intelligence is comprised of selfawareness, self-administration, social alertness and
social supervision. As people know their emotions
and those of others, they are afterward capable to
enhance, control and/or adjust those emotions.
Boyatzis and McKee (2005) pointed out that great
leaders are emotionally smart and they are awake,
aware, and familiar to themselves.
Fisher (2006) concluded that mood and emotions
accounted for exclusive variation for general job
satisfaction. Emotional intelligence is associated to
"sentiment, enthusiasm, personality traits,
disposition, spirit, and public skills" (Zeidner et al.,
2004).

Rational of the
Study

Recent trends in organizational life of employees have

led to assume psychological aspects as one of the most
important factors that may play considerable role in
increasing the employees performance, determining
job satisfaction and other positive organizational
behaviors including competitive edges and profit ratio
of organizations.
The aim of present study is to explore the relationship
between psychological ownership, job satisfaction and
emotional intelligence (EI) among employees of
different public and private sectors and how they vary
in terms of different demographic variables specially in
Multan.

Objectives of the Study

To examine association between Psychological

Ownership, Emotional Intelligence, and job

satisfaction
To identify the impact of emotional Intelligence on job
satisfaction and psychological ownership.
To explore the difference in psychological ownership,
Emotional Intelligence, and job satisfaction due to
income variations of employees of private and public
sectors
To determine the extent to which Emotional
Intelligence, job satisfaction and psychological
ownership vary among employees of public and
private sectors

Hypotheses
Emotional Intelligence will predict Job
satisfaction, psychological ownership among
employees.
Job satisfaction, psychological ownership and
Emotional Intelligence will co vary among
employees.
Job satisfaction, psychological ownership and
Emotional Intelligence will vary in terms of
organizational types.
Job satisfaction, psychological ownership and
Emotional Intelligence will vary in terms of income.

Method
Participants
175
Public
100

Private
75

Age range
of
participant
s 24-54

Simple
random
sampling

Instruments

Emotional
Intelligence
Scale
Psychological
ownership
scale
Job satisfaction
scale

Scale (Saima
Cheema, 2005)
12 items,
5 point likert
scale
Scale (James B.

Avey, Bruce J.
Avolio, Craig D.
Crossley, and Fred
Luthans
Psychological
Ownership Scale,
2009)
10 items
6Scale
point(Hackman
likert scale

and Oldham,
1975)
10 items
5 point likert
scale

Procedure
Informed consent along with psychological ownership
scale, job satisfaction scale, and emotional intelligence
scale was/were provided to 175 participants of study.
All the instructions were provided to the participant and complete
information about the purpose of the research.
Subjects were also given assurance that information will be kept
confidential.
Statistical Package for Social Sciences 17 version. Descriptive
and inferential statistic was calculated.

Table1
Correlation between Psychological Ownership, Job
satisfaction and Emotional Intelligence
Scale

Psychologi
cal
Ownership

Job
satisfacti
on

Emotional
Intelligen
ce

Psychological
Ownership

.036

.185*

.072

Job satisfaction
Emotional Intelligence

Note. *p>.05

Table2
Regression Analysis Showing Impact of Emotional Intelligence on
Psychological ownership and job satisfaction
Predictors b

Std.
Error

(Constant)

.365

2.29

6.27

Psychologic -.013
al
ownership

.005

-.202

-2.70

Job
.015
satisfaction

.006

.195

2.64

.000***
.008*

.009*

R2 = 0.076, Adjusted R2 = 0.59, (F (3, 171) = 4.666, p <

= 0.01)
*p < = 0.05, ***p < = 0.001

Table3
Mean, standard deviation, t- valve and p- value of public and
private organizations on the scales of Psychological Ownership,
Job Satisfaction, and Emotional Intelligence (N=175)
Scale

Psychological
ownership

Job
satisfaction

Organization
type
Private

N
75

SD

45.68

9.86

Public

100

45.60

9.77

private

75

37.57

9.67

public

100

37.37

9.98

Private

75

44.17

8.19

Public 0.05
df
=58,
*p<
Emotional
Intelligence

Note. df= 173,

100

44.92

8.51

.053

.95

.148

.87

-.587

.55

Graph representing organizational

differences

Table4
One way analysis of variance of different level of income on the
scale of Psychological Ownership, Job Satisfaction, and
Emotional intelligence among public and private employees
(N=175) Source of SS
Scales
df
MS
F
p
variance
Psychological

Ownership

Job
Satisfacti
on

Emotional
Intelligence

Between
Groups
Within Groups

898.810

449.405

15743.785

173

91.534

Total

16642.594

175

Between
Groups

489.709

244.574

Within Groups

12760.720

173

74.188

Total

13249.429

175

Between
Groups

2.754

1.377

Within Groups

121603.246

70.717

Total

12166.000

173
175

Note. df=173, *p<.05

4.910

.008*

3.297

.03*

.019

.098

Table5
Post Hoc Multiple comparisons with respect to
different income levels on the scale of Psychological
Ownership among public and private employees
(I) income

(J)
income

Mean
Difference
(I-J)

Std. Error

5000-25000

2600050000

7.042

2.555

<50000

7.975

2.560

<50000

.926

1.522

26000-50000

Note. *p>0.05

.006*
.002*
.54

Table6
Post Hoc Multiple comparisons of different income
levels on the scale of job satisfaction among public
and
private employees
p
(I) income
(J)
Mean
Std. Error
income
5000-25000

26000-50000

Note. *p<.05

2600050000

Difference
(I-J)
-1.820

<50000

-4.701

<50000

-2.880

2.300

2.305

1.370

.43
.04*

.03*

Graph representing income level

differences

Conclusion
Confirms the positive association between

emotional intelligence, psychological ownership, &

job satisfaction.
Predicts that Emotional Intelligence regressed
upon psychological ownership and emotional
intelligence.
No Significant difference was found among public
and private employees in terms of psychological
ownership and job satisfaction.
The study suggests that psychological ownership
and job satisfaction vary among employees with
different income levels but level of Emotional
Intelligence does not.

Implementations
This study implies that organizations should

promote the development of emotional intelligence

as a coping behavioral skill, to maintain job
satisfaction and organizational commitment.
Research findings suggest that employees should
be motivated and encouraged by improving
coworker relationships, healthy communication
through social skill trainings, conducting seminars,
fulfilling their needs and dealing their concerns at
work. Such consideration by organization will
positively affect their employees and overall
increase organizational productivity.

Limitations

Sample compositionthreatens external validity.

Study was conducted only
from public and private
sectors of Multan.

Suggestions

Increased Sample size

Nation wide data should
be collected
More demographic
variables would be
including for getting
better results like
personality, job tasks &
specifications and
organizational culture,
management styles etc.